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An
unabridged audio collection of the “best-of-the-best” science fiction stories
published in 2010 by current and emerging masters of the genre, as narrated by
top voice talents. In “Under the Moons of Venus,” by Damien Broderick, a
man, who has returned to a mostly deserted Earth from a terraformed Venus with
Luna and Ganymede as moons, longs to go back to Venus. In “The Shipmaker,” the
2011 story winner of the British Science Fiction Association Award, by Aliette de Bodard, a maker of living spaceships has her career threatened by
the birth of a sentient Mind that will come before the ship that will house it
will be ready. In “Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain” by Yoon Ha Lee, a
construct meets with an assassin that is the keeper of a gun that erases a
victim’s entire lineage to secure the destruction of another gun made by the
same gunsmith. In “Re-Crossing the Styx,” by Ian R. MacLeod, an
entertainer aboard a cruise ship falls in love with a zombie husband’s Minder
and schemes to free her from her marriage. In the steampunk story “Eight Miles,”
by Sean McMullen, an English lord hires a balloonist to take him and a
nonhuman female to a great height in order to learn the secrets of another
world. In “Elegy for a Young Elk” by Hannu Rajaniemi, the gods use a real
human to retrieve something important from a city that has become sentient and
surrounded by a firewall that protects against gods. In “Alone” by Robert
Reed, set in the author’s Marrow universe, a traveler aboard the
Great Ship has eschewed contact and remained alone for far longer than seems
possible. In the winner of the 2010 Asimov’s Readers’ Award for best novelette
“The Emperor of Mars,” by Allen M. Steele, a contract worker on Mars
becomes enamored with the science fiction retrieved from NASA’s Phoenix lander
that arrived on the red planet back in 2008. In “A Letter from the Emperor,” by
Steve Rasnic Tem, an imperial envoy visits an outlying colony where a
retiring colonel, whose memory is suspect for security reasons, claims to have
fought alongside the emperor. Finally, the 2010 Shirley Jackson Award winner for
best short story, “The Things,” by Peter Watts, is a retelling of John
Carpenter’s classic movie, The Thing, from the perspective of the
shape-shifting alien confronting a group of scientists in Antarctica. The
stories are read by Tom Dheere, Nicola Barber, Kate Baker, and Nathan Lowell.
Running time is more than 8.25 hours on 8 compact discs.